On Hype...

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Let's not forget this "hype" did not really originate in the "evil eye of the media" (or the public) as some people like to portray it. It came directly from CDPR. In fact, it costed them the whereabouts of 200 million dollars.

That's advertisement, not hype. Customers create hype. Media creates hype. Gossip creates hype. (And that's regardless of whether the hype is good or bad.) A studio says, "We've got an exciting new game -- coming soon!" A studio will always try to sell its salient features: "We've created environments with a level of detail never before seen! / Revolutionary new combat system! / Innovative control scheme! / Etc.!"

That's how advertising works.
  • That's why, in commercials, luxury cars are shown arriving at black-tie galas instead of being parked in people's driveways or caught in traffic -- which is where you're going to see a "LX" model or be sitting in one in real life.
  • That's why perfume commercials are full of steamy, sexy bodies engaged in some form of romantic encounter. That's not what happens because someone puts perfume on. Your grandma wears that perfume, remember.
  • That's why the burger in the commercial is perfectly constructed in a warmly lit room, served to the table by a smiling waiter wearing a spotless uniform. In real life, the burger is held together with toothpicks with cheese is running out the sides, and it's delivered to the table by the bus boy because the restaurant is busy.
There's nothing wrong with taking publicity shots or trying to highlight the qualities of my product. No, people that buy LX models of cars are not suddenly immune to traffic or automatically invited to high-class events. No, you don't suddenly become a sultry super-model because you wear a particular type of perfume. No, the burger is not guaranteed to be arranged on the plate the same way it was for the scripted television commercial, and no, not every restaurant in the franchise has the same uniform code.

It's theatre. It's meant to be fun, set the tone and mood, and drum up interest. No one is selling snake oil. Are we going to take issue with department store manikins misrepresenting how clothing looks because it's pinned in place?

Hype is the responsibility of the consumer. I don't recommend people engage in it. It's not a very informed way of analyzing. For anything.

Also, I'm not sure where you're getting $200 million. Where did that figure come from? If true, I'd agree that's pretty insane, and I would argue that it's time for the marketing department to start working smarter instead of harder. But here's a figure that is official. 13.7 million copies sold. That's going to be roughly $800 million and change in revenue to work with...so even $200 mil wouldn't break the bank. But I'd be extremely surprised to see that CDPR spent that much on advertising.
 
That's why perfume commercials are full of steamy, sexy bodies engaged in some form of romantic encounter. That's not what happens because someone puts perfume on. Your grandma wears that perfume, remember.
I remember that... Damn, the desillusion :sad:

Edit :
That's why the burger in the commercial is perfectly constructed in a warmly lit room, served to the table by a smiling waiter wearing a spotless uniform. In real life, the burger is held together with toothpicks with cheese is running out the sides, and it's delivered to the table by the bus boy because the restaurant is busy.
Now, I understand better why it looks like a truck has passed over my burger between the kitchen and my table :ok:
 
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I remember that... Damn, the desillusion :sad:
I still want the damn lightsaber toy that was supposed to telescope out of the plastic tube with a flash of light and hum of power! All it did when you flicked it out was go "cluh-thunk"! Didn't even glow in the dark!! Total bummer on a stick!!!

8-year-old me would eventually go on to learn that plastic cannot do these things, and I was still able to enjoy having pho-lightsaber duels in my back yard.

Now, a much older me is aware of the sheer awesomeness that is LED lightsaber recreations with dynamic sound and color...but is far more focused on building for retirement than anything even remotely involving space wizard toys.
 
I think is quite easy and cheap blame hype on the consumer when what was "Advertised" was totally far what we got. Let's admit it the marketing campaign of cyberpunk 2077 was not actually "Honest" at all.

I don't think such unethic pratices must be justified.

Just my two cents on this.
 

Guest 3847602

Guest
I think is quite easy and cheap blame hype on the consumer when what was "Advertised" was totally far what we got. Let's admit it the marketing campaign of cyberpunk 2077 was not actually "Honest" at all.
Let's see: for years you've been complaining about the direction CDPR took with this game, based on information they were showing (be it 1st person perspective, story-focus or level of customization). Game comes out and... you are disappointed about the same stuff as you were 2 years ago?
 
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I think is quite easy and cheap blame hype on the consumer when what was "Advertised" was totally far what we got. Let's admit it the marketing campaign of cyberpunk 2077 was not actually "Honest" at all.

I don't think such unethic pratices must be justified.
Let's take about a little example (quite right for me).
If you look at Apple page, my iMac is perfect for playing games... elegant... powerful... bla bla bla..
But they forgot to said (intentionally) :
- Most of games don't run on Mac OS...
- And if they run on Mac OS (or if you intall Windows) for the best experience, it's better to have external GPU...
Justified, maybe not, but that's the world where we living :)
 
Let's see: for years you've been complaining about the direction CDPR took with this game, based on information they were showing (be it 1st person perspective, story-focus or level of customization). Game comes out and... you are disappointed about the same stuff as you were 2 years ago?
Indeed... But the reasons were totally different. You see i am a fan of the pen and paper game and like other i was feed this was going to be an RPG based on our beloved Pondswith setting.

Actually the game was way worse than i expected.

However something happened. First i started to sniff something that was not quite right. And.. I could not even describe what you know when you have a sort of sensation that pinches you?. Then i started to see when the videos went you that there were always a pattern.

They were never showing open world gameplay.
Attempted to feed off this whole idea the game was more "immersive in first person" calling a Stylistic decision to remove third person cutscenes.
On top of that most of the Night City wire where showing the same things everybody saw.
Cherry on top i saw a demo live at Lucca Comix and game in italy.

THing is.. Yes i am disappointed about the same stuff as for why. Well is pretty clear. I don't think cdpr did a good jobs to represent a digital thing of Pondswith work but that is my personal opinion. I didn't felt like cyberpunk it felt like a themepark in the Cyberpunk theme. Some things were there visual were there but in the juice of it was far from the source material.

Still i am harsh because i wish Cdpr tp be able to totally spin the situation and deliver what they promised we have to see how it goes.

Keep in mind i never hated CDPR i was great fan of them since the times of Witcher 1 but what they did with cyberpunk and with all this infos coming around not only confirm the suspects i had but i also barely recognize CDPR right now.

As for Lekill:
A thing is saying...

Let's take about a little example (quite right for me).
If you look at Apple page, my iMac is perfect for playing games... elegant... powerful... bla bla bla..
But they forgot to said (intentionally) :
- Most of games don't run on Mac OS...
- And if they run on Mac OS (or if you intall Windows) for the best experience, it's better to have external GPU...
Justified, maybe not, but that's the world where we living :)

Another is saying... Hey this car has a fancy GPS navigator. Then you get the car and is not there...You turn the engine and it blows up breaking your car while the owner of the brand told you: Hey we tested this engine i am surprised how it "Work surprisingly well"

Because this is the situation here.

And yes. I felt kinda betrayed but i am not the only one it seems luckily

Back on the topic:

Between reports media rumors and the recent leaks well i don't want to be in the position of CDPR even if i dislike them right now it is painful when you are in a situation like this.

Investors pressing,Media Exploding there is not a single week where a Cyberpunk video with shocking news don't pop up. THis is a very dire situation to be sure.

The quittings.. Not sure what to think about it. We will see in the next months.
 
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seomid

Forum regular
That's advertisement, not hype. Customers create hype. Media creates hype. Gossip creates hype. (And that's regardless of whether the hype is good or bad.) A studio says, "We've got an exciting new game -- coming soon!" A studio will always try to sell its salient features: "We've created environments with a level of detail never before seen! / Revolutionary new combat system! / Innovative control scheme! / Etc.!"

That's how advertising works.
  • That's why, in commercials, luxury cars are shown arriving at black-tie galas instead of being parked in people's driveways or caught in traffic -- which is where you're going to see a "LX" model or be sitting in one in real life.
  • That's why perfume commercials are full of steamy, sexy bodies engaged in some form of romantic encounter. That's not what happens because someone puts perfume on. Your grandma wears that perfume, remember.
  • That's why the burger in the commercial is perfectly constructed in a warmly lit room, served to the table by a smiling waiter wearing a spotless uniform. In real life, the burger is held together with toothpicks with cheese is running out the sides, and it's delivered to the table by the bus boy because the restaurant is busy.
There's nothing wrong with taking publicity shots or trying to highlight the qualities of my product. No, people that buy LX models of cars are not suddenly immune to traffic or automatically invited to high-class events. No, you don't suddenly become a sultry super-model because you wear a particular type of perfume. No, the burger is not guaranteed to be arranged on the plate the same way it was for the scripted television commercial, and no, not every restaurant in the franchise has the same uniform code.

It's theatre. It's meant to be fun, set the tone and mood, and drum up interest. No one is selling snake oil. Are we going to take issue with department store manikins misrepresenting how clothing looks because it's pinned in place?

Hype is the responsibility of the consumer. I don't recommend people engage in it. It's not a very informed way of analyzing. For anything.
Not quite sure I agree there. By definition, hype means extravagant and intensive publicity/promotion.
The market shows, by default, intentionally overpromoted products tend to stop the marketing campaigns exactly when the product releases. The truth unveils to the public, rendering previous marketing attempts as exaggerated/untrue. Continuous hype lives past the release and gets further carried by the happy customer, willing to spread whatever goodness they found. This requires overwhelming amounts of fulfilled expectations, which i think weren't the case this time.
Furthermore, hype is actively provoked by creating the illusion of a rare collaboration (AAA gaming industry - Hollywood) which is basic marketing knowledge and was targeted for in the CP77 marketing campaign.
Don't get me wrong, marketing is necessary and I'm not saying all steps CDPR took were wrong. But they tried to bite off more than they could've chewed.
The customers perception is as responsible for their reasonable expectations, as the foundation it's getting built on. Every action causes a reaction. Every reaction is getting observed, and if the following action is taking advantage of previous behavior patterns, it's clearly targeted to do so. This is the definition of overpromoting.
One can't just make the customers fully responsible for their expectations and call it a day. I mean one can, but one really shouldn't. If a company loses 63% of it's net worth mere few months after a product gets released, no amounts of strong arguments can prove the customer wrong. Money talks.
 
I still want the damn lightsaber toy that was supposed to telescope out of the plastic tube with a flash of light and hum of power! All it did when you flicked it out was go "cluh-thunk"! Didn't even glow in the dark!! Total bummer on a stick!!!

8-year-old me would eventually go on to learn that plastic cannot do these things, and I was still able to enjoy having pho-lightsaber duels in my back yard.

Now, a much older me is aware of the sheer awesomeness that is LED lightsaber recreations with dynamic sound and color...but is far more focused on building for retirement than anything even remotely involving space wizard toys.
Disney is making retractable replica sabers for the actors and if the prototypes are successful I have no doubt they will attempt to sell them as is for collectible purposes and I think they implement that into a child toy like that so they can make even more money 8 year old you will be very happy in the near future.
 
I've moved our conversation here out of the financial thread, as this is interesting, but totally off-topic for the other discussion.

_______________

Also, I'll take a moment here to remind everyone that my statements are my own. They do not represent any opinion at CDPR, and I am not speaking for the studio. If I do need to do something official, you'll see blue text, like so.

_______________


Not quite sure I agree there. By definition, hype means extravagant and intensive publicity/promotion.
The market shows, by default, intentionally overpromoted products tend to stop the marketing campaigns exactly when the product releases. The truth unveils to the public, rendering previous marketing attempts as exaggerated/untrue. Continuous hype lives past the release and gets further carried by the happy customer, willing to spread whatever goodness they found. This requires overwhelming amounts of fulfilled expectations, which i think weren't the case this time.
I still disagree. It's impossible to validate exactly where a product becomes "over-promoted". That's entirely subjective, based on a large number of variables that are all outside of CDPR's control. This is always up to the consumer base. There have been numerous games that didn't have any advertising campaign worth mentioning, and they went completely viral entirely on their own merits. Look at Farmville, Minecraft, or Valheim. We've also had studios that invested heavily in very aggressive advertising campaigns, and few players even looked in their direction. Consider Too Human, Haze, or Homefront.

No studio is responsible for how much excitement their advertising generates. No studio is responsible for players' preferences or the way they choose to define subjective terminology, like "immersive", "next-gen", or "role-playing". Expectations are up to the individual. Trying to superimpose personal ideology onto someone else's words is guilty of the fallacies of both hasty generalization and false dilemma. There is no universal definition for terms like this, and the listener's interpretation does not automatically overrule the speaker's interpretation.

Here, many people like to go toward an argument of, "Oh -- come on! Now you're just trying to cover your tracks!! This is all bullshit, and you @#$%!ng know it!!!" Etc. Technically, that's a forfeit, offering a win for logic and reason right there, and it's why arguments like that never go anywhere. It's also largely why terms like "state-of-the-art", "groundbreaking", "revolutionary", etc. continue to be used with abandon in advertisements -- because they're inherently undefined, sound impressive, people expect to hear them, and no one tends to argue against them with any sustained sense or reason.

Let me now take a break and become critical of this type of advertising. I don't approve of it. I always suggest steering away from it. I made a pretty focused argument against using the words "...maximize your immersion..." to explain why the game was being switched to FPP only, as I knew full well many people would misinterpret the meaning. And if it was meant to mean, "You'll enjoy it more, player!", that would be too pretentious and assumptive of a stance, likely to generate more backlash than either understanding or excitement.

I'm a proponent of advertising for specific targeted audiences. It's not possible to appeal to everyone, and trying to do so will always leave some percentage of players disappointed. Better, in my estimation, to market to the people that will want your product. If I'm selling the finest seared steaks on the planet...let's not pretend that my vegetarian options are also top notch. Vegetarians are probably going to walk away from my restaurant unhappy with their meal. Best to advertise my steaks prominently and indirectly let the vegetarians know that this probably isn't a place they'll love. If they do show up anyway, they probably won't be expecting asparagus tempura crafted by the hands of angels...and they're likely to enjoy their fairly simple 3-bean salad without complaint. This type of advertising takes a lot of confidence, though. And especially when investors are involved, it's not likely to pass a board. They'll want to play it safe and just create "general appeal" to ensure the most return on their investments.

You can't escape this if you want to stay in business at that level. This is a "Welcome to Earth" type of concern.

The customers perception is as responsible for their reasonable expectations, as the foundation it's getting built on. Every action causes a reaction. Every reaction is getting observed, and if the following action is taking advantage of previous behavior patterns, it's clearly targeted to do so. This is the definition of overpromoting.
One can't just make the customers fully responsible for their expectations and call it a day. I mean one can, but one really shouldn't.
You're fighting gravity here. This isn't CDPR -- this is marketing in general. This is what marketing is. This is how advertising works. This is what all advertising is like, regardless of product, service, or consumer base. No company is going to intentionally undersell itself. All companies are going to try to make themselves out to be the best option. No product or service is "the best ever" -- that's subjective. I don't care how amazing a company's reputation is or how many people are singing their praises; I will be able to find you thousands of dissatisfied customers. I don't care how awful a company's reputation is, or how many people are thronging the internet to flame and bash them; I will find you thousands of people that are loyal and satisfied customers. (Biting into that for purposes of analyzing a product would be hype. That's what hype is.)

It is the consumer's responsibility to be educated about the industry and their purchases. It is the consumer's responsibility to be able to differentiate between fact and interpretation. It is the consumer's responsibility to make an educated purchase. It is the consumer's responsibility to identify their subjective reactions to the product as such -- not superimpose their subjectivity as if it were fact simply because others happen to agree with them. It is entirely possible for 100,000 angry people to be completely groundless in their arguments. We see it all the time, actually. (I call it "the internet".)

The issue here that will hold water is if a product is guilty of false advertising. And CP2077 was absolutely not false advertising. Hype is not false advertising -- it's irresponsible focus on the part of the consumer. The game is exactly what it was always advertised as being. For some people, it simply wasn't "enough of" or "as good as" they subjectively wanted it to be. That's on them, not the studio. No one was forced to buy the game. Everyone was offered a return policy. That return policy was even extended for last-gen consoles. (Which was totally warranted, and I'm not going to defend that part of the release. That was a mess, and I was very happy to see CDPR's reaction and Iwinski's message. That was a prime example of the studio's tenacity to do what was right on top of all they were dealing with at that point.)

The major, ongoing issue is that some people simply wanted the moon. They hyped the advertisements up in their own mind. They ignored the clearly written and stated, "What you are seeing is a work-in-progress. / Everything you see is subject to change." They superimposed their own, subjective interpretations onto the language used. They continued to hype it up, of their own volition, and/or they fed on the hype others were generating outside of the official marketing. They then received something that didn't live up to their subjective desires.

At this point comes the great challenge of life that people will learn to face, or they're in for a very rocky existence. Things don't always work out the way we want or expect. Period. Sometimes, the best laid plans will go awry, or unforeseen factors will dash our dreams to dust in front of our eyes. (A global pandemic during the busiest period of production left many people at CDPR feeling exactly the same thing, I'm very sure.) Mistakes can be made...bad calls can happen...and the final product may not be what was originally envisioned.

Let me be honest again -- I didn't feel the game was blow-my-mind incredible, overall. I loved the city itself -- it's an amazingly well-developed world! The level of detail is astounding. I find the storyline riveting, and the characters, especially Johnny, to be complex, engaging, and polished to a fine sheen. I found combat to be lackluster. Things like driving were not very gracefully implemented. Plenty of stuff, like random encounters, police response, fast-travel, and so forth felt like placeholders. It took a lot of work to getting the game running well (even if it worked just fine in the end). And there were still loooooots of bugs.

See, I expected nothing more, really. I've never, not once in my life, picked up a huge RPG of this scale and had it work smoothly out-of-the-box. Every Bethesda game I've ever played (which is all of them) took years of patching to be playable without significant issues. Every Bioware title had a few big issues that needed to be ironed out. I can go all the way back to Ultima VII and the weeks and weeks of work it took for me to write a config.sys and autoexec.bat file that would work properly with Origin's Voodoo Memory Manager. I can go even further back to needing to manually dump the "above-board-memory" (RAM) in my Commodore 64 so that Sword of Fargoal wouldn't randomly quit. Expectations are easy to temper once one is familiar with reality vs. expectations.

As for CP2077:
Is it an RPG? Absolutely. And I can source numerous other titles that show exactly the same gameplay mechanics that are called "RPGs". Is it a huge, open world? Yes, it is. Way bigger and more detailed than many games I can compare it to. Does it offer freedom of choice and play style? 100%. There are many titles I can cite that don't offer nearly as much horizontal freedom or depth. Does it feature incredible graphics? Yup! The city looks divine on my PC. If it doesn't look as good on console or lower end hardware, that's to be expected, as can be proven by comparing any number of titles side-by-side. But what about all the changed or cut features? Yeah. That's what happens during a game's production. There are endless examples of this that can be cited from decades of video game design.

But -- did it live up to my expectations, based on what I was interpreting the marketing to mean, because of what I and a huge number of other players decided the game was supposed to be? Well...ah...that's entirely up to the individual. No one ever promised perfection...and no one ever claimed that everyone would like it. Some people didn't. A lot of people didn't, I guess. That's disappointing.

It was a bit rough at the end there, when everything needed to come together. Work is ongoing to fix issues! Return policies are available, as always. You've played the game -- it's your decision. If you keep it, hopefully you'll like it more in the future! If not, well, that's understandable. It will always be there for purchase if you change your mind!

What? What else??? What more is there? Expecting anything other than the freedom to return the game is overstepping and crossing lines in so many ways that it would be almost impossible to list them all. CDPR is not responsible for assumptions, interpretations, or imaginings in people's minds. In the future, I'd recommend, very strongly, not to engage in any form of "hype". It's not a responsible way to analyze or make decisions.

If a company loses 63% of it's net worth mere few months after a product gets released, no amounts of strong arguments can prove the customer wrong. Money talks.
And this is a red herring. For a lot of reasons, in this case, that has nothing to do with the quality of the game. Being publicly traded means that you're putting that portion of your company up for grabs on a market that is not known for either its stability nor its honor. The stock market is viciously cut-throat, and without going into too much detail here, all it takes, sometimes, is a single person with selfish intent that's willing to throw everyone else involved under the bus for their own, personal gain.

This is why I would always want to avoid offering public shares for any company I ever owned. Better to be small and stable than go for the big cash and risk something like that. All a matter of what you really want out of life.

But, no, the stock market drop had absolutely nothing to do with "how bad the game was". The major drop occurred before the game was released. As stated in the other thread, the game sold 13.7 million copies. That revenue didn't simply vanish into thin air. It's fine.
 
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Guys, this could have been a lot worse. Sly Stalone doing Judge Dredd style worse, CDPR have at least maintained the world and faithfully tried to realise the source material.
It was buggy as all hell on day one but they seem to be working on it.

What are we saying? "Hey CDPR, next time get a less impressive PR team!" They did a good job, they didn't lie, they built excitement around the launch and developed some shit hot branding.

If you want to blame someone blame the lazy journalists and "influencers" who ran away with the demo footage and portrayed it as the finished product.

CDPR's failure was not finding a way to manage those expectations, but it seems to me that management failed to realise just how many problems they were going to have until it was too late.

In terms of what they're doing now, they seem to be between a rock and a hard place. If they tease the dlc they'll be attacked for not finishing the bug fixes first. If they stay quiet for too long they risk apathy from their consumers. I think the approach they're taking, quietly getting on with the job and putting out the weekly stats and character interest pieces to counter the "Dead game" "so broken nobody played it" narrative makes sense, but they'll have to change it up soon.
 
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...CDPR have at least maintained the world and faithfully tried to realise the source material.
...
CDPR's failure was not finding a way to manage those expectations, but it seems to me that management failed to realise just how many problems they were going to have until it was too late.
This is actually a great point, and it was something that I raised some years ago. Adopting an established IP is always a huge challenge, especially if you're intending to head in a new direction with it. The trouble is the psychology inherent in the existing consumer base.

If I create my own IP, I'm using a blank slate. I can base my work on any number of other IPs as inspiration, then craft something wholly unique that has as good a chance of standing on its own. I create my own player base, from the ground up.

If, however, I adopt an existing IP, especially if it's something like Cyberpunk 2020 that has an established, long-standing fan base with their own understandings of what that game is and how it works, there's a pretty paradoxical hurdle I need to jump right off the bat. Any change I make is automatically going to start alienating people from the most foundational player base that I have for my game -- existing fans of the IP. Anything I do that is "unfaithful" or "inaccurate" to the source material will intrinsically trigger a negative response from at least some of the existing fans. This will then be compounded by arguments from new fans who have only ever played my version of the game. Even if both sides are enjoying it, I'm going to wind up with a pretty significant divide on where things should go from there. Ultimately...I'm going to have to choose a side, and I'm going to lose a lot of customer loyalty either way when I do. Or, I'm going to try to please everyone, and the entire game will likely fall flat on its face.

At the very best, I'll wind up with a title that has enough general appeal to hold onto disparate fans...but the more popular my version of the game becomes...the more dissonance is created between my game and the original IP. I'll never be in any position to have my game recognized as more than a "fantastic spinoff" or "definitive reboot", both of which are going to leave a large population of potential players shaking their heads sourly at either my game or the original IP.

It's not a fantastic recipe for a big venture.

_______________


Quick notes -- the reason I think The Witcher Series worked is because of a few, important factors.

  1. The existing literature was very well-developed. There was a great amount of source material to draw from that (obviously) lent itself well to a video game adaptation.
  2. The games achieved a level of maturity that didn't exist on the market, really. Many other games had tried, but they either tried to keep things "PG-13", resulting in something campy and cringey...or they went over-the-top with pointless profanity and T&A thrown in simply because sex sells, resulting in an "R" rating for no valid reason. TW1 created a mature, gritty world that also felt grounded and qualified, and it did it well. So, a relatively untapped market.
  3. Most importantly -- very little of the world knew about Sapkowski's novels. It wasn't widespread literature, so many people were introduced to TW1 completely cold. It was their first introduction to the world, and they could not be disappointed by any parts of the game that were too disparate from the source material. It was, in practice, largely a blank slate.
 

Guest 3847602

Guest
What are we saying? "Hey CDPR, next time get a less impressive PR team!" They did a good job, they didn't lie, they built excitement around the launch and developed some shit hot branding.
CDPR's failure was not finding a way to manage those expectations,
Well, it's PR team's responsibility to manage expectations. Even if youtubers and journalists are building up hype (for clicks), you shouldn't ignore the fact that a lot of people are expecting almost entirely different game than the one you are making. You shouldn't wait as long as CDPR did before you show footage that represents "final version of the game".
And, speaking about advertisements and targeting the right audience - here is the trailer that looks like a prime example of what not to do:


It's obviously designed to attract GTA fanbase, whose main expectations are emergent gameplay and sandbox, two things that CP2077 doesn't have.
 
I've moved our conversation here out of the financial thread, as this is interesting, but totally off-topic for the other discussion.

_______________

Also, I'll take a moment here to remind everyone that my statements are my own. They do not represent any opinion at CDPR, and I am not speaking for the studio. If I do need to do something official, you'll see blue text, like so.

_______________



I still disagree. It's impossible to validate exactly where a product becomes "over-promoted". That's entirely subjective, based on a large number of variables that are all outside of CDPR's control. This is always up to the consumer base. There have been numerous games that didn't have any advertising campaign worth mentioning, and they went completely viral entirely on their own merits. Look at Farmville, Minecraft, or Valheim. We've also had studios that invested heavily in very aggressive advertising campaigns, and few players even looked in their direction. Consider Too Human, Haze, or Homefront.

No studio is responsible for how much excitement their advertising generates. No studio is responsible for players' preferences or the way they choose to define subjective terminology, like "immersive", "next-gen", or "role-playing". Expectations are up to the individual. Trying to superimpose personal ideology onto someone else's words is guilty of the fallacies of both hasty generalization and false dilemma. There is no universal definition for terms like this, and the listener's interpretation does not automatically overrule speaker's interpretation.

Here, many people like to go toward an argument of, "Oh -- come on! Now you're just trying to cover your tracks!! This is all bullshit, and you @#$%!ng know it!!!" Etc. Technically, that a forfeit, offering a win for logic and reason right there, and it's why arguments like that never go anywhere. It's also largely why terms like "state-of-the-art", "groundbreaking", "revolutionary", etc. continue to be used with abandon in advertisements -- because they're inherently undefined, sound impressive, people expect to hear them, and no one tends to argue against them with any sustained sense or reason.

Let me now take a break and become critical of this type of advertising. I don't approve of it. I always suggest steering away from it. I made a pretty focused argument against using the words "...maximize your immersion..." to explain why the game was being switched to FPP only, as I knew full well many people would misinterpret the meaning. And if it was meant to mean, "You'll enjoy it more, player!", that would be too pretentious and assumptive of a stance, likely to generate more backlash than either understanding or excitement.

I'm a proponent of advertising for specific targeted audiences. It's not possible to appeal to everyone, and trying to do so will always leave some percentage of players disappointed. Better, in my estimation, to market to the people that will want your product. If I'm selling the finest seared steaks on the planet...let's not pretend that my vegetarian options are also top notch. Vegetarians are probably going to walk away from my restaurant unhappy with their meal. Best to advertise my steaks prominently and indirectly let the vegetarians know that this probably isn't a place they'll love. If they do show up anyway, they probably won't be expecting asparagus tempura crafted by the hands of angels...and they're likely to enjoy their fairly simple 3-bean salad without complaint. This type of advertising takes a lot of confidence, though. And especially when investors are involved, it's not likely to pass a board. They'll want to play it safe and just create "general appeal" to ensure the most return on their investments.

You can't escape this if you want to stay in business at that level. This is a "Welcome to Earth" type of concern.


You're fighting gravity here. This isn't CDPR -- this is marketing in general. This is what marketing is. This is how advertising works. This is what all advertising is like, regardless of product, service, or consumer base. No company is going to intentionally undersell itself. All companies are going to try to make themselves out to be the best option. No product or service is "the best ever" -- that's subjective. I don't care how amazing a company's reputation is or how many people are singing their praises; I will be able to find you thousands of dissatisfied customers. I don't care how awful a company's reputation is, or how many people are thronging the internet to flame and bash them; I will find you thousands of people that are loyal and satisfied customers. (Biting into that for purposes of analyzing a product would be hype. That's what hype is.)

It is the consumer's responsibility to be educated about the industry and their purchases. It is the consumer's responsibility to be able to differentiate between fact and interpretation. It is the consumer's responsibility to make an educated purchase. It is the consumer's responsibility to identify their subjective reactions to the product as such -- not superimpose their subjectivity as if it were fact simply because others happen to agree with them. It is entirely possible for 100,000 angry people to be completely groundless in their arguments. We see it all the time, actually. (I call it "the internet".)

The issue here that will hold water is if a product is guilty of false advertising. And CP2077 was absolutely not false advertising. Hype is not false advertising -- it's irresponsible focus on the part of the consumer. The game is exactly what it was always advertised as being. For some people, it simply wasn't "enough of" or "as good as" they subjectively wanted it to be. That's on them, not the studio. No one was forced to buy the game. Everyone was offered a return policy. That return policy was even extended for last-gen consoles. (Which was totally warranted, and I'm not going to defend that part of the release. That was a mess, and I was very happy to see CDPR's reaction and Iwinski's message. That was a prime example of the studio's tenacity to do what was right on top of all they were dealing with at that point.)

The major, ongoing issue is that some people simply wanted the moon. They hyped the advertisements up in their own mind. They ignored the clearly written and stated, "What you are seeing is a work-in-progress. / Everything you see is subject to change." They superimposed their own, subjective interpretations onto the language used. They continued to hype it up, of their own volition, and/or they fed on the hype others were generating outside of the official marketing. They then received something that didn't live up to their subjective desires.

At this point comes the great challenge of life that people will learn to face, or they're in for a very rocky existence. Things don't always work out the way we want or expect. Period. Sometimes, the best laid plans will go awry, or unforeseen factors will dash our dreams to dust in front of our eyes. (A global pandemic during the busiest period of production left many people at CDPR feeling exactly the same thing, I'm very sure.) Mistakes can be made...bad calls can happen...and the final product may not be what was originally envisioned.

Let me be honest again -- I didn't feel the game was blow-my-mind incredible, overall. I loved the city itself -- it's an amazingly well-developed world! The level of detail is astounding. I find the storyline riveting, and the characters, especially Johnny, to be complex, engaging, and polished to a fine sheen. I found combat to be lackluster. Things like driving were not very gracefully implemented. Plenty of stuff, like random encounters, police response, fast-travel, and so forth felt like placeholders. It took a lot of work to getting the game running well (even if it worked just fine in the end). And there were still loooooots of bugs.

See, I expected nothing more, really. I've never, not once in my life, picked up a huge RPG of this scale and had it work smoothly out-of-the-box. Every Bethesda game I've ever played (which is all of them) took years of patching to be playable without significant issues. Every Bioware title had a few big issues that needed to be ironed out. I can go all the way back to Ultima VII and the weeks and weeks of work it took for me to write a config.sys and autoexec.bat file that would work properly with Origin's Voodoo Memory Manager. I can go even further back to needing to manually dump the "above-board-memory" (RAM) in my Commodore 64 so that Sword of Fargoal wouldn't randomly quit. Expectations are easy to temper once one is familiar with reality vs. expectations.

As for CP2077:
Is it an RPG? Absolutely. And I can source numerous other titles that show exactly the same gameplay mechanics that are called "RPGs". Is it a huge, open world? Yes, it is. Way bigger and more detailed than many games I can compare it to. Does it offer freedom of choice and play style? 100%. There are many titles I can site that don't offer nearly as much horizontal freedom or depth. Does it feature incredible graphics? Yup! The city looks divine on my PC. If it doesn't look as good on console or lower end hardware, that's to be expected, as can be proven by comparing any number of titles side-by-side. But what about all the changed or cut features? Yeah. That's what happens during a game's production. There are endless examples of this that can be sited from decades of video game design.

But -- did it live up to my expectations, based on what I was interpreting the marketing to mean, because of what I and a huge number of other players decided the game was supposed to be? Well...ah...that's entirely up to the individual. No one ever promised perfection...and no one ever claimed that everyone would like it. Some people didn't. A lot of people didn't, I guess. That's disappointing.

It was a bit rough at the end there, when everything needed to come together. Work is ongoing to fix issues! Return policies are available, as always. You've played the game -- it's your decision. If you keep it, hopefully you'll like it more in the future! If not, well, that's understandable. It will always be there for purchase if you change your mind!

What? What else??? What more is there? Expecting anything other than the freedom to return the game is overstepping and crossing lines in so many ways that it would be almost impossible to list them all. CDPR is not responsible for assumptions, interpretations, or imaginings in people's minds. In the future, I'd recommend, very strongly, not to engage in any form of "hype". It's not a responsible way to analyze or make decisions.


And this is a red herring. For a lot of reasons, in this case, that has nothing to do with the quality of the game. Being publicly traded means that you're putting that portion of your company up for grabs on a market that is not known for either its stability nor its honor. The stock market is viciously cut-throat, and without going into too much detail here, all it takes, sometimes, is a single person with selfish intent that's willing to throw everyone else involved under the bus for their own, personal gain.

This is why I would always want to avoid offering public shares for any company I ever owned. Better to be small and stable than go for the big cash and risk something like that. All a matter of what you really want out of life.

But, no, the stock market drop had absolutely nothing to do with "how bad the game was". The major drop occurred before the game was released. As stated in the other thread, the game sold 13.7 million copies. That revenue didn't simply vanish into thin air. It's fine.
I don't agree with this "it's marketing" stance. A generalistic burger comercial will have what we have become used to. It comes down to taste and nutrient levels. When we're talking about entertainment promotion we're mixing functionality with art, a product with the functional goal to entertain (and all the functional goals of making it playable) but that will be entangled with all the artistic propositions and whether those suit the sensitivities of its audience. We can discuss whether a movie trailer is effective - not only does it appeal to those that end up wanting to watch the movie but does it represent well it's themes, aesthetic, the pace,...
Furthermore a "seller" of an artistic product (or creator/s) will hopefully want to defend their artistic vision. To missrepresent the product at its promotion should be critissized not only out of respect for the consumers but for their pride and in the long run, the composure of their artistic names.
I'm a contemporary dancer and creator myself and used to work with choreographers that, as soon as they feel their work being missrepresented by (for example) a theater announcement will not drop the ball until it is corrected.
The false advertizing of CDPR to me, was that. Several Night city wires that focused mostly on the open world elements (the gangs, the fashion, the branching story and exploration, the "living in Night City") when the game's focus was something else entirely.
This isn't hyperbolizing everything into Immersive, Spectacular,... it's a strategy of missrepresenting their vision for what they chose to be their statement for sales. It doesn't respect the fans of the type of game they created nor the fans of the types of games they advertized for.

And in this case the hype came very much from the source, gaining a life of its own, which was recognized by CDPR and further fueled because in the end it was a narrative, a well made narrative created by narrative creators.
I love the Witcher 3, love/hate CP2077 on ps4 pro. I have lots of good things to say about their games and unfortunately a lot of attitudes to criticize aswell, the marketing was just deplorable.

EDIT: as I finished reading the last comments of the thread. And I agree that there is a timeline for these things, different development stages but, at some point, if they realize they can't do all they set out to do, the humility to withdraw on some statements instead of continuing the narrative
 
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Well, it's PR team's responsibility to manage expectations. Even if youtubers and journalists are building up hype (for clicks), you shouldn't ignore the fact that a lot of people are expecting almost entirely different game than the one you are making. You shouldn't wait as long as CDPR did before you show footage that represents "final version of the game".
And, speaking about advertisements and targeting the right audience - here is the trailer that looks like a prime example of what not to do:


It's obviously designed to attract GTA fanbase, whose main expectations are emergent gameplay and sandbox, two things that CP2077 doesn't have.
Yeah, I take your point but that footage always smelt of cutscene to me, the external spinning angle on the camera whilst shooting from the car etc. But then I learned that scepticism way back when, it used to be really common for companies to put out demo videos and ads that were entirely prerendered cutscene and intro footage and you'd get completely different gameplay.

It is disappointing that there aren't more cyberdoc animations and you can't generally shoot from cars.
 

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Yeah, I take your point but that footage always smelt of cutscene to me, the external spinning angle on the camera whilst shooting from the car etc.
I meant "supercars + luxurious villas + supermodel in the pool".
It's less the question of whether it's an in-game cutscene (it obviously isn't), it's more about accurately representing what the game is about. And CP2077 is certainly not about any of those things.
 
This is actually a great point, and it was something that I raised some years ago. Adopting an established IP is always a huge challenge, especially if you're intending to head in a new direction with it. The trouble is the psychology inherent in the existing consumer base.

If I create my own IP, I'm using a blank slate. I can base my work on any number of other IPs as inspiration, then craft something wholly unique that has as good a chance of standing on its own. I create my own player base, from the ground up.

If, however, I adopt an existing IP, especially if it's something like Cyberpunk 2020 that has an established, long-standing fan base with their own understandings of what that game is and how it works, there's a pretty paradoxical hurdle I need to jump right off the bat. Any change I make is automatically going to start alienating people from the most foundational player base that I have for my game -- existing fans of the IP. Anything I do that is "unfaithful" or "inaccurate" to the source material will intrinsically trigger a negative response from at least some of the existing fans. This will then be compounded by arguments from new fans who have only ever played my version of the game. Even if both sides are enjoying it, I'm going to wind up with a pretty significant divide on where things should go from there. Ultimately...I'm going to have to choose a side, and I'm going to lose a lot of customer loyalty either way when I do. Or, I'm going to try to please everyone, and the entire game will likely fall flat on its face.

At the very best, I'll wind up with a title that has enough general appeal to hold onto disparate fans...but the more popular my version of the game becomes...the more dissonance is created between my game and the original IP. I'll never be in any position to have my game recognized as more than a "fantastic spinoff" or "definitive reboot", both of which are going to leave a large population of potential players shaking their heads sourly at either my game or the original IP.

It's not a fantastic recipe for a big venture.

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Quick notes -- the reason I think The Witcher Series worked is because of a few, important factors.

  1. The existing literature was very well-developed. There was a great amount of source material to draw from that (obviously) lent itself well to a video game adaptation.
  2. The games achieved a level of maturity that didn't exist on the market, really. Many other games had tried, but they either tried to keep things "PG-13", resulting in something campy and cringey...or they went over-the-top with pointless profanity and T&A thrown in simply because sex sells, resulting in an "R" rating for no valid reason. TW1 created a mature, gritty world that also felt grounded and qualified, and it did it well. So, a relatively untapped market.
  3. Most importantly -- very little of the world knew about Sapkowski's novels. It wasn't widespread literature, so many people were introduced to TW1 completely cold. It was their first introduction to the world, and they could not be disappointed by any parts of the game that were too disparate from the source material. It was, in practice, largely a blank slate.
There are some massive challenges, and I have watched so many wonderful IP destroyed by "creative" interpretation of the source material. More often than not the results are disappointing, whether the original creator is involved or not.

So far CDPR are two for two as far a I'm concerned. (I'll confess to having read Sapkowski as a result of the witcher 3 but it's no less impressive that way round, if anything he slightly lost his way with the whole Arthurian tie in)

There are so many games and films that aren't great interpretations or "reboot" scenarios that then become gospel. Only today I found myself cringing at a Fortnite thread on twitter where a nod to Close Encounters was being referred to as the Rick and Morty bit.

I've lost my train, sorry its been a busy week.

I was going to end up way off topic with a list of all my disappointments so I'll stop.

If they want to take some more seriously obscure classics and run with it, I think they're a safe pair of hands. Please do some Judge Dredd the world needs that, but it's probably too close to cyberpunk. Failing that Dune or Foundation, Asimov deserves a new audience.
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I meant "supercars + luxurious villas + supermodel in the pool".
It's less the question of whether it's an in-game cutscene (it obviously isn't), it's more about accurately representing what the game is about. And CP2077 is certainly not about any of those things.
No I do get your point. Which then fueled the "cut content" argument
 
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I have read all your comments and everything you say seems great, I like and even more the moderator who makes a fantastic presentation and is committed to his values, I love it !!!

I'll be very brief: I think I've never seen any company spend so much money on advertising for a game, generate so much hype and produce such a collapse. They have wanted to swallow more than can be chewed as a colleague has said before, totally agree.

The marketing team has done a wonderful job creating the desire to want to live the experience that was described to us in each trailer. The last trailer before launch was one of the best I've seen in my life, you can feel the excitement and happiness because something very good is coming !!! I do not want to miss it!!!

I bought the book "The world of Cyberpunk 2077" and the collector's edition guide, in addition to learning about the lore of the game.

On December 10 (my birthday also) we began to see reality ... an incredible game, beautiful but that was neither finished nor had the development outside the expected missions, seeing the graphic level that we were enjoying in the big city.

Jackie's gun to her head was my first reality punch ...

Is CDPR at fault? He has it and has already apologized.

Are we the players to blame? Always in less quantity, since we react to those that they present to us and they are responsible for seeing the expectation that is being created, to stop and not continue feeding what does not exist.

Was it worth it? It has provided them with a brutal income that allows them to take the next step, at the cost of a deterioration of their image and bad opinion by a wide sector of the gaming community, as a AAA company that develops video games.

Is it ethical? NO, it is dirty and far from professional ethics. Please do not say things that are not in the game or show demos subject to changes, you generate frustration in the players !!!

They have already taken note and now we are the community of players who have to be VERY CRITICAL with their next jobs to applaud if they do things well or PENALTY them if they cross the red lines again. I bought a fantastic game called Cyberpunk 2077 that I enjoyed intensely in its history and it led me to absolute desolation when I wanted to know the city ... a dead city full of empty automata.

Maybe in 5 years time they will shut our mouths with their Cyberpunk game, at the moment it is subject to a lot of quality criticism. Criticisms with which we seek that they do not make incorrect decisions again.

Now after 6 months the players are wondering: What can we expect? Hello!!! anyone there? That is the feeling that there is now among those who support this new IP. We don't know anything about what will happen.
 
It's a sad state of affairs when the new normal becomes misrepresentation, window dressing and, in some cases, deliberate deception. It's a sadder state of affairs when perception changes to accept that as a proper way to depict products and conveniently shift all blame away from product makers.

In fairness, its increasingly becoming the new normal. It's difficult to buy anything anymore without playing dodgeball in a room full of smoke and mirrors. Product makers, reviewers, "influencers", journalists (if there is a such thing anymore)... Finding a "reliable" source is a real chore. It's a good bet anyone teaching ethics will never run out of material to cover.
 
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